Posted on 12/17/2007 1:17:18 AM PST by Tlaloc
Primary season, which appears to have begun about a week after the 2004 presidential elections, is getting sillier with each passing day. This is thanks to the media, which not only feast on the season’s daily menu, but attempt to predigest it for the American people.
As fuzzy as the process of the selection of the two party’s presidential nominees appears to be, the media’s goal is as clear as day: to make it fuzzier and to influence the outcomes.
They do it by attaching great importance to a host of factors that are really meaningless, not the least of which is citing national polls to indicate the front-runners, while carefully ignoring those factors which will decide the outcome.
They know that national polls are worthless indicators of which candidates are probable winners, but that doesn’t stop them from proclaiming that the alleged winners in those polls are the front-runners in the race for their party’s nomination.
Given that false assumption, Rudy Giuliani emerges as the front-runner for the GOP nomination. Primaries, however, are not decided by national polls, they are decided by the voters in the primary states.
Giuliani may be the front-runner in national polls, but he’s barely in the race in such states as Iowa and New Hampshire — the earliest contests where victory goes a long way to indicating which candidates are the likely nominees when the dust clears. And Giuliani himself admits it, pinning his hopes on the states whose primaries come much later and among which he is popular.
When Rudy Giuliani loses in Iowa and when Rudy Giuliani loses in New Hampshire and South Carolina, his standing in the national polls will also plunge.
What is now going on is what’s been going on for decades in presidential primaries — you have all of these leakers leaking information, such as the Drudge Report’s contention that the Democrats want Mike Huckabee to win the GOP nomination because they believe he’d be the easiest Republican to beat in the general election.
Translated, that means that Huckabee really scares the pants off the Democrats, who hope they can prevent him from being the GOP nominee by persuading Republican voters from voting for someone else because Huckabee is a sure loser.
The reality here is that Americans have been electing governors to the presidency for a long time — such men as Roosevelt, Carter, Reagan, Clinton and George W. Bush; and guess what, there are only two former governors running in the GOP primaries, Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee.
Based on the record, that fact alone makes either one a probable winner next November. And it’s why the Democrats and their media allies want neither man to win the GOP nomination.
Their front-runners, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, are not governors; they are United States senators, and in modern times the American people simply do not elect senators to the presidency.
Match either one against either Romney or Huckabee, and history teaches us that it’s most probable that the next occupant of the Executive Mansion in Washington will be a former occupant of a governor’s mansion in Arkansas or Massachusetts, and not a United States senator.
Given that fact, doesn’t it defy reason for the Democrats to want to run against Mike Huckabee? Today’s Democrats may be corrupt, not just a little bit slimy. And they are inherently Marxist, but they not stupid, even though Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid make them look that way.
The American people need to be informed about these simple facts, but the media are doing their best to keep the truth from them and manipulate them, especially by attaching great importance to the meaningless national polls.
I know. And speaking of just plain old odd, what's odd is that Thompson is perhaps the candidate most like Michael's dad.
I agree. Surface analysis like “Americans vote for governors” sounds to me like the sports statistics the color commentator is always spouting ad nauseam during the game: “When so and so gets 100 yards rushing, his team wins 97.65% of the time!” And then so and so gets 110 yards rushing, and his team loses.
In 2000 we heard constantly that the taller candidate wins. The shorter candidate won. Then we heard the same thing in 2004, until the shorter candidate won again.
It’s the same thing with the governors beat senators line. It’s true, until it isn’t, and then they’ll come up with a new irrelevant statistic. As always it depends on the particular circumstances of the race, which Reagan is forgetting.
“Governors usually win,” except in the postwar era, of the 9 presidents elected to office (Eisenhower to Bush 43, not counting Ford) only 4 (Carter, Reagan, Clinton and Bush 43) were governors.
“the Republican base WILL NOT vote for this liberal fraud in the general election. Ditto Romney and Rudy.”
Mark me as part of that BASE!
LLS
Indeed. Michael Reagan is usually as sharp as a tack. So much of what he says here is also true i.e. governors and senators and so on.
The thing of it is, is some governors running for president on the Republican side would cause so many voters to stay home that you would end up with, not only a Democrat slam dunk for the White House, but 435 Democrats in the House of Representatives as well.
I refuse to believe that Reagan doesn't see that.
Well, at least he got that much right.
The one huge issue he doesn't mention at all, as in so many other articles I've read/heard recently in all forms of media, is immigration. Any discussion of the current election cycle that doesn't include immigration is either ignorant (Regan is not) or they live in that alternate universe that tries to ignore it and wishes it would simply go away because there is no real compromise on it - Either you truly respect the laws of this country and the wishes of it's citizens or you do not.
Engaging in flowery rhetoric about the "noble" illegals or ignoring them completely and hoping people will follow the journalists/commentators cause du jour and jusI forget about them until the election is over won't work this time.
The MAIN reason I won't support Huckabee (Nor Guliani) is my perception that he will be another Bush when it comes to illegals. Huckabee is eager to pull his religious convictions into his politics, and to me that means he will sell me and my children down the river for his chance to "do the lords work" and "save" the illegals. Just because his same religious convictions on abortion work the way I like isn't enough for me to overlook his fatal flaw on illegals.
NO MORE COMPASSIONATE/HEROIC CONSERVATIVES WHO ARE LIBERALS DRESSED UP IN RELIGIOUS CLOTHING! EVER!
I didn’t know this about Fred. I have one person left, anybody but Hillary?
This is a poor group.
My wife watches television. Occasionally I look over at the screen to see visuals of really disgusting people that were there SmelloVision, would leave the room unpleasantly odoriferous.
This election cycle resembles that analogy as the slimeball MSM manipulates the campaign to reflect the popularity of “Reality TV” programs.
Serious times are here, and serious times are in the future. We need to get serious about whom we want to represent us and lead our Nation through these seriously turbulent times.
Who IS serious?
In the end Huck can shuck Hillary anyday of the week and give Obama a run for his money simply on the basis of being a governor, not a senator.
People are looking for change and consider a member of a Congress with a 22 percent popularity rating a “loser.”
My instincts say a non-Senator, Congressman is the best GOP candidate.
That’s not to say I love Huckabee, Romney or Giuliani, but they all fit the bill.
Fred was just on Fox. His common sense and steady approach is in contrast with the rest of the group.
The Dems are playing Brer Rabbit in the briar patch when they claim they’re worried about the Huckster.
fixed it.
While I am still undecided, I am amazed at the lack of discussion regarding Thompson and CFR. Hard to line that up with conservative thought in any manner.
How do you think Huck would fare against Oprah’s Obama? AR might go Huck in that case, but I guess Obama would win with OH.
Oprah is serious about electing Obama. I had thought she was really for HRC and was playing games, but she means to get Obama elected, and she has millions of sheeple who follow her.
Still if the Huck were up against Obama, Huck might do well, much better than against his friend HRC.
The reason for this whole “religion” thing is so that the dems can label the GOP as religious wackos — they’re not afraid of Mr. Huckabee.
Unlike some candidates who are attempting wholesale rewrites of their pasts, Thompson has been completely upfront in admitting his part in the legislation and has said that he is proud of parts of it, but that some parts of it were a mistake. And he has been clear on which parts are which. He hasn’t tried to lie and obfuscate, he has come right out and said he thought at the time that getting soft money out of politics was worth the rest of the bill, but in retrospect it was a mistake.
From Human Events:
“Yes,” replied the former Tennessee senator without hesitation. “You will recall that the central part of the legislation was getting rid of soft money [from the political process].” He then went on to remind me that he came from a background in the private sector and, in that sector, it would have been thought unseemly for “hundreds of thousands of dollars” to be poured in to influence someone’s decision. In the public arena, “it got to be the norm” because of the soft money, upon which there were no limits for donations to the two major political parties.” The contributors, he said, would then, “harass legislators before they vote on anything. This was not a good idea.”
Thompson went on to remind me that it was his amendment to McCain-Feingold that, “raised the hard money index” and he was also proud of that.
If there is anything in McCain-Feingold that “has not worked out,” he went to say, it is “placing limitations on ads [by independent groups] in the [political] process. Thompson hinted that he would support legislation to change this, since “the Supreme Court has better things to do with its time than hear cases on unfair limitation.” (Earlier this year, by a decision of 5-to-4, the Supreme Court struck down parts of McCain-Feingold that dealt with limiting ads by independent groups.) He also said that the landmark campaign finance legislation he held shepherd to passage (and which President Bush signed in ‘01) has created a larger bureaucracy to enforce regulations and “that part hasn’t worked out.”
I hope we don’t have to find out.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.
LLS
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